Hollywood Hunter

On the second day of the Oscars ceremony, the unsurprisingly reported results of the awards occupied only a small amount of newspaper pages, and most of the media's attention was attracted by the news that the Westeros system blocked the Hearst Group.

Early on Tuesday morning, many heavyweight paper media exposed the news of ‘sources’ that Simon Westeros personally ordered all companies of the Westeros system to sever all cooperation with Hearst Group. The media that followed Melisandre’s party last night gave the most direct evidence. All media reporters under the Hearst Group were blocked outside the Sunset Tower Hotel, which caused some skirmishes.

Faced with reporters' questions, the senior management of Hearst Group declined to comment on this response.

The Westeros system does not hide it.

With the continuous verification by multiple media, the news was thoroughly confirmed.

The executives of Daenerys Entertainment, Eaglet, Melisandre, etc. in the Westeros system all gave affirmative answers when they were called or inquired by reporters: the company has been notified. , Immediately cut off all cooperation with Hearst Group.

Not only that, the "Hollywood Reporter" also reported another piece of news on the following Wednesday.

Warner Bros. Pictures quietly canceled a number of advertisements for "Batman: The Dark Knight Rises" planned to be used by Hearst Group's media.

The first trailer of "Batman: The Dark Knight Rises" scheduled for June 3 was officially released in early March, announcing the official launch of the DC movie universe super blockbuster with a budget of 80 million US dollars. Mass media marketing.

Obviously, not only the Westeros system, but also companies that have a cooperative relationship with the Westeros system have also been required to stand in line.

When asked by reporters whether other film projects of Warner Bros. Pictures will also cancel advertisements to Hearst Group’s media, the answer given by Warner’s executives was ambiguous but obviously tendentious. The other party stated that Time Warner Group has its own Traditional paper media platforms, and paper media do not occupy a high proportion of movie promotion, even if it does not cooperate with Hearst Group, it will not be affected.

It only took two days for the news to spread to the confirmation.

Whether it is the Westeros system or the Hearst family, it is a monster-level existence for the general public. The speed of accumulation of wealth is unstoppable, and the other is a deeply rooted old family.

Therefore, this matter has quickly become a ‘big melon’ that everyone pays close attention to.

Hearst Group can no longer remain silent.

On Wednesday afternoon, William Hirst III, who was surrounded by a large group of reporters at the headquarters of the Hearst Group in Manhattan, faced media inquiries. He could not hide his anger and said that the Westeros system was abusing its market position to engage in unfair business competition. Hearst Group will take all possible means to protect its rights.

It is completely confirmed that Simon Westero will go to war with the veteran Hurst family, and the attention of the people who eat melons quickly turned to the cause of the matter and the upcoming impact of this matter.

Then, early on Thursday morning, two media outlets on the East Coast directly solved the mystery.

The "New York Post" under News Corporation spent a lot of time publishing an article revealing the inside story of the incident.

The public suddenly realized.

It turns out that the contradiction between the Westeros system and the Hearst Group has been around for a long time.

Three years ago, in order to get rid of the heavy debt burden brought about by the Reynolds Nabisco merger, the Reynolds Nabisco Group chose to sell a large number of company assets, including 20% ​​of the shares of ESPN, a famous sports TV station under the Met/ABC Group.

Daenerys Entertainment is very optimistic about the development of cable TV, so it chose to bid. Hearst Group, which is also transforming to diversification, also intends to bid for this batch of shares.

At that time, it was in the early stage of the development of the Egreat portal, and it was in great need of the news and information content of traditional paper media.

Hearst Group used the provision of news and information content to the Eaglet portal as a bargaining chip in exchange for Daenerys Entertainment to voluntarily abandon the bid for ESPN shares. In the end, this part of the equity fell into the hands of Hearst Group. However, after acquiring ESPN's equity, Hearst Group turned back because it was worried that the Internet media would affect the interests of the traditional paper media industry and refused to fulfill its original cooperation promise.

The entanglement between the two sides arose.

The article also specifically mentioned that Daenerys Entertainment's offer for ESPN equity was as high as 200 million US dollars. After voluntarily giving up, Hearst Group only used 180 million US dollars to conclude the transaction, saving a full 20 million US dollars. , Which also involves another tax avoidance operation of no less than 20 million US dollars.

However, after taking a big advantage, Hearst Group was not satisfied. Not only was it unwilling to fulfill the initial cooperation promise, but also believed that the addition of Daenerys Entertainment Group in disguised form allowed Hearst Group to pay more for ESPN shares. Funds, therefore, continued to target the Westeros system.

The San Francisco Chronicle, a subsidiary of Hearst Group, has been continuously attacking the Westeros system in recent years.

The breaking point of the contradiction is the recent storms.

Congressman David Merros, who is backed by the Hearst family, continues to use his power to try to initiate improper investigations against new technology companies in the Westeros system. The reason is not to protect the interests of taxpayers at all, let alone The fundamental reason for the so-called monopoly of these companies is that the free Internet services such as news information, classified information, and social networks provided by Eaglet have harmed the interests of traditional paper media giants such as Hearst Group.

As evidence, this article in the "New York Post" also deliberately attached a photo of William Hirst III and Congressman David Merrosh who looked like a good buddy at a cocktail party. For public readers, compared to many serious photographs, this photo that clearly shows a sense of "worry and evil" has a lot of lethality. It instantly made many people determine their inclination. Members of Congress elected by one vote, one vote, It turned out to be just a spokesperson for the rich and powerful.

For this article, the Hearst Group spokesperson immediately refuted it.

Unfortunately, this article has given too many people a preconceived notion.

David Merowth, who became the focus of media and public attention in an instant, also quickly jumped out to refute, but the effect was obviously not big. The Igreat portal followed the article in the "New York Post" and published more David Merow Think about articles related to the interests of the Hearst family. The congressman, who has been re-elected for three terms, has received a large amount of political donations from the Hearst Group in the past three elections, and all articles on the Hearst family media platform about the other party They are all beautiful words without negatives.

In return, David Melrose has recently urged Congress to relax the'cross-media ownership ban' that restricts the media from having too much voice. Once the ban is relaxed, the public may only hear voices from one media in daily life. This will have a strong impact on press freedom.

It can be said that this congressman's "double standards" between promoting the monopoly of traditional media and combating the emerging Internet industry is simply shameless.

When the Hearst Group and David Melrose responded to the revelations of this article, another related article in the Wall Street Journal also attracted the attention of many people: "Do you want to be a friend or an enemy?" 》

This report did not comment on the conflict between the Hearst Group and the Westeros system, but analyzed the impact of the incident in detail.

First of all, Hearst Group is not a listed company, but it also announces its results.

In 1993, the Hearst Group’s total revenue was US$2.11 billion, with a revenue growth rate of 9%, and its annual net profit was US$169 million. The annual growth rate was 12% and the net profit rate was 8%.

Traditional paper media groups, like the American auto industry, are restricted by many union forces, so operating costs are quite high. The Hearst Group’s ability to maintain a net profit margin of over 8% has exceeded the industry average.

Now, just the Westeros system. The advertising budget of more than 65 million dollars invested in Hearst Group in the past year has accounted for 3% of the other party’s annual revenue. All of this part of the revenue is lost. The group’s performance in 1994 had a significant impact.

If Simon Westeros uses the influence of the Westeros system to ask other partners to stand in line, then this negative impact is at least twice as high as the Westeros system itself cuts off cooperation. According to Hearst Group’s revenue growth of 9% in 1993, once the conflict between the two parties continues, Hearst Group’s revenue growth in 1994 is likely to completely stagnate.

For a traditional media industry that has gradually begun to show signs of decline, stagnant revenue growth actually means regression.

After all, regardless of whether it is calculated based on factors such as inflation or the natural increase in workers' wages, a company must ensure considerable performance growth every year in order to maintain operations. Once revenue growth stagnates, inflation and employee expenses will not stop rising, and the first thing that will affect profits is.

When profits are completely offset by the negative impact of stagnant revenue growth, there will be a series of chain reactions such as layoffs, sales of businesses, and cost reductions. If the situation does not improve, it will eventually go bankrupt.

Reynolds and Nabisco, both of which were once industry giants, had huge cash reserves and excellent financial conditions. Five years after the record-setting $33 billion merger, the huge debt caused by the original merger triggered a A series of chain reactions have been on the verge of bankruptcy in the past two years.

The scale of Reynolds Nabisco is more than ten times that of the Hearst Group.

Therefore, the Wall Street Journal judged that if the Hearst Group cannot resolve this conflict as quickly as possible, even if it only lasts for one year, it will have a serious negative impact on the operation of the Hearst Group.

In comparison, in addition to the public opinion pressure and litigation risks that may have to be undertaken, the Westeros system, which is already a hundred times larger than the Hearst Group, will hardly suffer any substantial damage.

After all, Simon Westero's net worth at this time has reached 200 billion U.S. dollars, while the current wealth of the Hearst family, the five grandsons of William Hirst back then, is less than 2.5 billion U.S. dollars, which is more than 80. Times the gap. Moreover, the media empire owned by the Hearst family that has made many politicians, celebrities, and rich people quite jealous in the past, in the face of the Westeros system, the lethality is also obviously insufficient.

What's more, before banning the Hearst Group, Simon Westero had just made a ‘friend’ with the strength of the Hearst Group, the New York Times Group.

Now that the Internet industry is surging and flourishing, the Westeros system is bound to be inevitable for traditional media to complete the transition to the digital age.

The New York Times Group undoubtedly made a very wise choice.

Although it is obvious that Simon Westeros intends to control the traditional paper media to avoid the recent deterioration of media public opinion against the Westeros system, but the other party has given the New York Times Group a generous return, and directly abandoned Igreat. The monopoly of portal news content has made many accusations that the Westeros system monopolizes Internet media lose their roots.

The most important point is that the achievement of this cooperation is likely to cause more and more traditional media groups that may still criticize the Westeros system to gradually reverse their attitudes in exchange for the opportunity of traditional media to transform into the digital age.

Therefore, the next question is, for the Westeros system, do you want to be a friend or an enemy?

The news of the "New York Post" naturally came from the arrangement of the Westeros system. The report of the "Wall Street Journal" surprised Simon a little.

However, it was just a little accidental.

For Western capitalist society, capital really represents everything.

Westeros System VS Hearst Group.

Even if the conflict between the two sides caused Simon to lose 10 billion US dollars, it would only account for 5% of his personal wealth. In this process, the Hearst family, whose assets are less than 2.5 billion US dollars, may have lost everything.

Even the Westeros system suddenly attacked the Hearst Group, which has had a positive effect in the last two days.

Since the beginning of this month, due to the dual pressures of the media and the political circles, the two listed core Internet companies of the Westeros system, Cisco and AOL, have continued to fluctuate in their share prices. From the beginning of the month to last Friday, the cumulative decline has exceeded 5%. The company is already close to a market value of 60 billion U.S. dollars. A decline in stock prices of more than 5% means that the shareholders of both companies will have to bear more than $3 billion in paper losses.

The sudden exposure of Eaglet’s cooperation with the New York Times Group on Monday, coupled with the Westero system’s change of the defensive attack on the Hearst Group in the previous weeks, directly stimulated the stock prices of Cisco and AOL.

The previous decline of the two companies was originally just because the capital market was worried that the authorities might respond to the pressure of public opinion, and their own financial performance and high growth are doomed to the two companies' unlikely decline.

Now, as the New York Times Group has turned to the Westeros system, the Hearst Group has been slammed into the head by Simon Westeros, and the form has been reversed in an instant.

In the three days from Monday to Wednesday, the stock prices of Cisco and AOL have recovered their highest points before the shock at the beginning of the month. When the market opened on Thursday morning, Cisco's stock price broke through again, and the total market value broke through the $60 billion mark in one fell swoop.

As of the East Coast’s close at 4:30 pm on Thursday, Cisco’s market value has reached 61.5 billion U.S. dollars, followed by AOL’s market value of 57.3 billion U.S. dollars. The Nasdaq technology stock sector is driven by these two leading technology stocks. It rose across the board, with an increase of 1.7% that day.

At the beginning of this year, Wall Street technology stocks, who believed that there was a serious bubble in the Internet industry, had already suffered heavy losses before March. A substantial increase, but I did not expect that starting from March 21, in just a few days, the short book profits accumulated for three weeks have all disappeared and directly turned into losses.

Cersei Capital's Cersei Fund Management Company has been targeting long positions in the technology stocks at no less than US$5 billion since the beginning of the year. In the previous few weeks, it took the opportunity to increase the total amount of long positions to more than US$12 billion. Because of the strong financial support and the use of low leverage of only three to five times, the short-term decline in stocks such as Cisco and AOL did not cause a liquidation crisis for Cersei Fund Management.

Now, just in the last few days, Cersei Fund Management's original book loss of more than $600 million has been quickly wiped out and it has begun to generate substantial profits.